“Aunt Angelina and Danya are asking to stay for a couple of days. They need to do back-to-school shopping, you know. Prices where they live are ridiculous, and here we’ve got plenty of malls and good discounts.”
Elizaveta set her thin palette knife aside. On her worktable stood a half-finished architectural model of a residential complex. She worked as a model maker, building tiny neighborhoods, courtyards, parks, and miniature parking lots out of thin plastic, cardboard, and special polymers. The job demanded enormous concentration and silence.
“Of course, Gleb. Let them come. We still have plenty of space,” she replied with unshakable gentleness, tucking a loose strand of hair behind her ear. There was genuine understanding in her voice. Elizaveta truly believed that family should help one another, especially when a child needed to prepare for the school year. Patience was part of her nature.
Gleb exhaled in relief and went to the kitchen to put the kettle on. He was a good man from a small town, a real hard worker. He installed and adjusted smart climate-control systems for industrial greenhouses: running humidity sensor cables, configuring controllers, and mounting ventilation modules. He could do everything, from fixing complicated wiring to laying new floors.
The apartment they lived in had come to Elizaveta through an incredible combination of luck and family unity. Her paternal grandmother, Diana Sergeyevna, had suddenly fallen ill and decided to move to the city to be closer to her son. She sold her spacious village house and gave the money to the family. Ulyana Denisovna, Elizaveta’s mother, a practical and far-sighted woman, discussed the situation and put her own country cottage up for sale. Together, the money was enough for a major step: buying a large three-room apartment for their only granddaughter.
They had purchased the apartment at a serious discount. The previous owner had been a lonely woman who had barely taken care of the place. After her death, the heirs, who lived on the other side of the country, had no desire to waste time cleaning or preparing it for sale. They listed it under one simple condition: take it as it is. Elizaveta’s parents quickly completed the deal and then transferred the apartment to their daughter as a gift.
There was nowhere near enough money for a full renovation yet. Gleb had fixed the wiring himself and glued the wallpaper back in places, but the floors creaked terribly, sounding like an old ship at sea. The bathroom looked as if it remembered ancient times, and the gloomy kitchen cabinets seemed to have personally survived the Brezhnev era. Still, Elizaveta felt completely happy.
Two days later, Angelina Pavlovna appeared at the door with twelve-year-old Daniil. Their voices instantly filled the entire apartment.
“Well, Liza, receive the landing party!” the aunt announced loudly, dropping huge bags right in the hallway. “We’ll crash here for about a week. Buy clothes real quick and then get out of your hair. Danya, take off your shoes! Why are you standing there like a stranger?”
Elizaveta only smiled. Her patience seemed limitless. She cooked dinners for the guests, cleaned up after her nephew, who had a habit of leaving candy wrappers and apple cores on the sofa arms, and continued working on her models at night, when the apartment finally fell silent. She sincerely believed this was a one-time act of family support.
A month passed.
Elizaveta was sitting on the old squeaky sofa, carefully gluing miniature trees for a new project. The hope that her husband’s relatives would show some understanding still flickered inside her, but reality stubbornly proved otherwise.
The visits from the province became regular. At first, Gleb blushed, felt embarrassed, and politely asked for permission. But gradually, without even noticing it himself, he began simply informing his wife after the decision had already been made. There was always some reason to come: someone urgently needed dental treatment at a city clinic, someone else wanted to visit an exhibition, another relative simply needed to kill time before catching a train.
“Gleb, I have a huge project due tomorrow, and we have guests again,” Elizaveta said calmly when her husband told her about yet another visit.
“Liza, how am I supposed to refuse them? They’re family. They won’t stay long,” he said, looking away.
The next day, Elizaveta went to see her mother. Ulyana Denisovna poured her tea and listened with a slight squint.
“Liza, you’re a grown woman. Solve this with your husband. They are his relatives, and he needs to set boundaries. Your home has turned into a boarding house.”
“I’ve tried, Mom. He just can’t say no to them. He’s afraid of offending them.”
That evening, Uncle Denis Olegovich arrived with his fourteen-year-old daughter, Alina.
“Hey there, hosts!” the uncle boomed, tossing a heavy sports bag onto a wobbly chair. “We’re just passing through. Lina needs to see some private doctor, and we’ll hit a few shops too. You don’t mind, right? Whip something up for us, Lizok, my stomach’s twisting after the trip. Alina, turn on the TV. We’re relaxing here.”
Elizaveta locked herself in the bathroom and, for the first time, felt her usual softness dissolving, leaving behind a dull, aching anxiety. The next day, she decided to take a delicate step and called Gleb’s mother, Valeria Igorevna.
“Valeria Igorevna, hello. Denis Olegovich is staying with us now. You know, I have very difficult work projects, and the noise really gets in the way. Maybe you could speak to them somehow? Ask them to make their visits a little less frequent?”
Her mother-in-law’s voice sounded syrupy, but there was a clear chill beneath it.
“Lizonka, what are you saying? They aren’t coming to me, they’re coming to the city. You have a large three-room apartment. This has absolutely nothing to do with me. You’re adults. Sort it out yourselves. Guests must be received with respect.”
Elizaveta hung up. Her hope for understanding collapsed like a poorly glued cardboard house. She realized that Gleb’s mother had simply redirected the entire flow of provincial relatives into a convenient and, most importantly, free city branch — straight into her apartment.
Gleb saw how his wife was changing. She became quiet, and her movements lost their former lightness. He sensed that the problem was boiling over, but he could not find the strength to stand up to his own mother. Valeria Igorevna called her son regularly and repeated the same thing: “Receive the guests. You live in a mansion. Don’t be greedy. There’s plenty of space.”
Desperate, Gleb asked his friend Alexey for advice. They worked together installing irrigation systems in greenhouses. Alexey was a blunt and decisive man.
“Listen, Gleb,” Alexey said while adjusting a pressure sensor. “What are you, a free hotel for them? Send those relatives away. You have your own family, your own wife. You’re going to drive her into the grave with this traveling circus.”
“How can I send them away? They’ll be offended for life. My mother will eat me alive…”
“Then let them be offended. Your life matters more.”
But Gleb did not listen. Weakness won over common sense.
A week later, he came home pale, his lips nervously twitching. Elizaveta was just finishing painting the roof of a model building graphite gray.
“Liza… There’s something I need to tell you. The day after tomorrow, my second cousin’s grandfather is having an anniversary celebration in the city. Five people are coming. Aunt Angelina, Uncle Denis, and a couple of nephews. They’ll be staying with us. Just for three days.”
Something inside Elizaveta broke.
A heavy, suffocating disappointment flooded her mind. All her concessions, all her natural patience and delicacy, had been mistaken for weakness. In just a few seconds, disappointment turned into thick, icy anger. She looked at her husband, who had lowered his head and avoided her eyes.
“All right,” she said quietly.
Gleb raised his eyebrows in surprise.
“Really? You’re not angry?”
“No. LET THEM COME,” Elizaveta replied evenly.
Gleb lit up. He immediately grabbed his phone and happily called his mother: “Everything’s fine, Liza agreed! We have permission!” Valeria Igorevna instantly passed the good news on to the relatives.
That same evening, Elizaveta met with her friend Marina. Marina created interior florariums, grew rare species of moss, and had always been known for unconventional thinking.
After listening to the story, Marina smirked.
“Liza, you’ve tolerated this for far too long. It’s time to cut this knot. You were planning to start demolition before the renovation anyway, weren’t you?”
That was when a cold decision formed in Elizaveta’s mind. It was utterly unemotional, calculated, and devastating. She was not going to tolerate it anymore.
The morning of the big day began like any other. Gleb packed his tool case, kissed his wife, and left for a large site outside the city to adjust the heating system of a massive agricultural complex. The relatives were supposed to arrive at the bus station closer to evening, where Gleb planned to meet them and bring them home.
As soon as the door closed behind him, Elizaveta picked up the phone and dialed.
“Hello, demolition crew? Yes, I’m expecting you in forty minutes. The cargo taxi should come too.”
Soon Marina burst into the apartment, followed by four strong workers.
“Let’s work fast, boys!” Elizaveta commanded.
The process moved at incredible speed. The apartment was stripped down to its bones. Under the women’s supervision, the workers carried the squeaky sofa and old sagging armchairs to the trash. The historic kitchen set from the era of stagnation was mercilessly torn apart with crowbars and carried out piece by piece.
They removed the cracked sink, ripped up the old linoleum, and exposed the dusty concrete floor beneath it. Everything disappeared from the rooms. Elizaveta had reasoned perfectly: if they were going to do the long-awaited renovation anyway, they might as well start right now. She had taken her valuable models, tools, and few good clothes to her grandmother Diana Sergeyevna’s place in advance.
By lunchtime, the apartment had transformed. It had become huge, echoing, and unbelievably empty. Bare walls with torn wallpaper, concrete underfoot, lonely wires sticking out of the walls. Not a chair. Not even a stool.
“Looks magnificent,” Marina chuckled, looking around the empty space. “Listen to that echo!”
Elizaveta stood in the middle of the living room. There was no softness left in her. Only steel-like certainty that she was right. Meanwhile, two remaining workers approached the doorways. With a loud crack, they began removing the old interior doors along with the frames.
Evening was approaching. It grew dark outside.
The lock in the front door clicked.
“COME IN, dear guests!” Gleb’s cheerful voice rang out from the hallway. “Make yourselves comfortable, Liza will feed us something in a minute!”
A crowd of five people with enormous bags puffed and squeezed into the hallway. Angelina Pavlovna, Uncle Denis Olegovich, and the rest of the family stepped forward and froze. The bags fell onto the dusty concrete with heavy thuds.
Gleb stopped with his mouth open. The eager smile slowly slid from his face.
Before them was absolute, ringing emptiness. Nothing. No furniture, no appliances. In the depths of the apartment, two men in work overalls were using nail pullers to rip the last interior door away from the wall with a crack. Pieces of old foam fell onto the floor.
“What kind of joke is this?” Uncle Denis forced out, blinking. “What’s with the bare place? Where are we supposed to stay? Did you sell the apartment or something?”
“Lizaveta, what is going on here?!” Angelina Pavlovna shrieked, looking around at the bare walls in horror. “Where are the sofas? Where’s the kitchen? Are we supposed to sleep on concrete like homeless people?”
Elizaveta came out of the hallway. She was completely calm.
“Good evening. We’ve started renovations. Surprise.”
“What do you mean, renovations?! We warned you we were coming! We came for the anniversary!” Uncle Denis shouted, red with outrage. “GET OUT of here with your workers! We need somewhere to sleep!”
“There is nowhere to sleep here. And nothing to eat. You can lie down right in the dust,” Elizaveta replied coldly.
The relatives erupted into an unbelievable uproar. Spewing streams of local slang, complaining about wasted time and being “set up,” they grabbed their bags and flew out of the apartment like bullets, slamming the front door behind them. The whole outraged crowd headed straight to Valeria Igorevna’s place.
Twenty minutes later, Elizaveta’s phone exploded with calls. Her mother-in-law’s name appeared on the screen. Liza took a deep breath, answered, and instantly changed her tone, making it trembling and tearful.
“Liza! What is happening over there?! Why has the whole family come crashing into my place in hysterics?! They say you left nothing but bare walls!”
“Valeria Igorevna…” Elizaveta masterfully let tears enter her voice. “It’s a disaster. We are completely BROKE. There’s no money. We have such terrible utility debts that I was afraid to even tell my husband. We had to sell everything. Everything. Even the old bed and kitchen were sold to resellers for pennies. We have nothing to eat…”
“How do you mean… you sold everything?” her mother-in-law’s voice faltered.
“Yes, everything is very bad. Valeria Igorevna, please, I’m begging you! HELP US! GIVE US SOME MONEY, at least fifty thousand to start with, or we’ll be thrown out into the street! We need to replace the pipes, and we have nothing to pay with!”
Dead silence hung on the other end of the line. Then came short beeps. Valeria Igorevna had hung up in horror. Charity at her own expense was definitely not part of her plans. Elizaveta looked at the darkened screen of her phone and laughed sincerely.
Gleb had been standing in the empty room the entire time. He did not try to justify himself. The workers gathered their tools and left the apartment. Silence filled the space. Gleb slowly looked around at the bare walls, then at his wife, who had just performed the greatest act of her life.
And then he understood everything.
He understood how far he had pushed the woman he loved with his own helplessness. He understood why she had so easily agreed to five guests coming over. It had not been an act of goodwill. It had been the execution of his indecision.
Gleb silently walked over to the crowbar the workers had left behind, picked it up, approached the last half-broken doorframe, and yanked it toward himself with force. The wood gave way with a crunch.
“Tomorrow we’ll go choose laminate flooring,” he said quietly but firmly. “And a new bathroom. I’ll install everything myself.”
The grapevine among the provincial relatives worked instantly and flawlessly. The news that Gleb and his wife had gone completely broke, sold off all their belongings, and were now living on a concrete floor buried in debt spread like wildfire. No one even considered visiting the empty apartment of the bankrupt couple anymore.
Valeria Igorevna, meanwhile, was so frightened by the possibility that her daughter-in-law or son might start begging her for money that she stopped calling completely. She retreated into total silence.
But all those numerous relatives who had grown used to using the city apartment as a base for every possible reason now went exclusively to her. They slept on her carpets, emptied her refrigerator, and demanded attention. Valeria Igorevna endured the endless stream through clenched teeth, but she still could not bring herself to say no. Secretly, she cursed her cruel daughter-in-law.
As for Elizaveta and Gleb, within a few months they completed a beautiful modern renovation. The apartment began a new, bright life, where no one disturbed their peace anymore.
The main problem had been solved once and for all.
